Page 9 of Once Upon a Dark October
Chapter Nine
“ G wen sent this up for you.”
The crystal-cut wine glass had been filled to the brim, its blood-scent faintly fragrant like ripened fruit. She must’ve known that Morrigan’s needs required a vessel larger than a teacup.
“She gave me very firm instructions to make sure you drank all of it. And I get the feeling she’ll find out if you don’t.”
“You’d be right about that.”
Perched on the rim of her enormous copper bathtub, Morrigan dragged her fingers through the rising water. The washroom was spacious, stone walls and glossy tiled floors and an abundance of candles. The singular stained glass window didn’t offer a lot of outside moonlight, yet the room was aglow and shimmering. Hazy with tendrils of steam, gold splashed upon the walls.
Many homes employed the use of alchemy in copper piping to heat their water, though it was often a luxury. The copper itself was, I’d been told, imbued with heating properties, though sometimes you had to be careful getting the right temperature.
Half of the tub had been filled when she shut off the faucet and began discarding her soiled clothes. I’d changed out of mine while she had started the bath, after she assured me her overcoat could be salvaged later when she had the energy.
The floor tiles were slippery under my bare toes, the edge of my sleeveless chemise catching on the air as I approached her, wine glass in hand. Morrigan had stripped to the waist, and I stood there, gazing shamelessly at her, without a tame thought in my head. I lingered on the gold necklace that dangled low between her breasts, a knot of misshapen metal. Easy to recognize as a deathbed memento, though less refined. People often liked to have them molded into other shapes.
Morrigan stretched her fingers to take the glass from my hand by the rim. Indulging in a few generous sips, she hooked the chain around her thumb.
“A piece of the vampire who Turned me.” She swiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand. Setting aside the glass—Gwen would’ve been pleased to see it already half empty—Morrigan preoccupied herself with sprinkling lavender and other herbs and delicate flower petals into the bathwater. “Before she walked into the sea, she let Josephine, Sonia, and I drain nearly all of her. That was our inheritance.”
The petals and lavender buds swirled around her circling fingers. I watched her necklace dangle over the rim, skimming the surface. “That was all she wanted,” Morrigan continued. “Her blood, used to further our studies. It was ancient—she’d been there for the fall of the monarchs’ reign. I don’t think this is what she had in mind for her legacy.”
“I think you did all you could,” I offered.
Morrigan made a noise of indifference, then finished off the wine glass, her head tipped back to collect the last droplets. While she shed the rest of her bloodied clothing, I found soaps nestled in a mahogany cabinet. Gentle splashing and a relaxed sigh told me she had eased herself into the bath.
“Which do you prefer? ”
“Whatever you like,” she answered lazily. “Something that will drown her scent.”
Before she could steal the bar of soap from me, I knelt on the rug behind where she had molded herself into the side of the tub, her arms resting along the edge. I worked the soap into a lather between my palms, rich spices and fathomless oceanic notes blossoming into the steam. Morrigan ducked under then resurfaced, water beading on her skin and the ends of her tousled hair. The sudsy lather dispatched the crusting blood as I scrubbed into her scalp.
Morrigan hummed, leaning into my hands. We settled into comfortable silence, with Morrigan disappearing every so often beneath the water to wash away the soap suds. I figured it would take a few washes to get her completely free of it, no traces of the vampire’s stench left behind.
I hadn’t realized how strongly I’d already bonded to Morrigan until I was faced with the possibility of losing her so soon.
“I cannot believe Sonia wanted me to be her coven’s blood alchemist,” I said after a while.
“You said you were scholarly,” she replied, blinking water from her eyelashes. “Could she have picked up on that?”
My hands stilled. “It’s possible. I did spend a lot of time cleaning in their library when I was meant to be doing other chores. The bookshelves went on for ages . After a while, there was no sense in hiding my reading breaks.”
“You haven’t found our library yet?”
“Before you summoned me, I think I might have stumbled upon it. Are the doors locked? Gwen said you’d lost the key.”
Morrigan’s lips pursed. “No. If there are locked doors, it’s for good reason.”
“Is it haunted? I heard a woman weeping, or so I thought…in the hall with the locked doors. The hall that looks as though no one’s walked in it for a few decades? ”
She plunged beneath the surface, evasive and stubborn, enough to halt the conversation with questions left unanswered.
Another secret.
“ Oh . I’ve got it!”
My palm slapped inches from the top of her head, and Morrigan resurfaced, sputtering up a mouthful of water and hurling playful curses at me. She brought her arm down hard, sending a spray—suds, flower petals, and all—right into my face.
I yelped, dodging her attack by mere seconds, but the moment my head popped back up, she splashed me again. There was no escaping this time, and she’d soaked the front of my chemise and left the ends of my hair glittering with soapy bubbles. She looked entirely too pleased with herself, especially once I realized the chemise had plastered to me like a second skin.
“You did that on purpose,” I accused. Morrigan laughed, craning her neck so she could enjoy the sight of my taut nipples tenting the thin fabric.
“You were saying?”
“Give me a moment, let me find the thought I left around here somewhere.” I combed the suds into my wet hair. Morrigan snatched the foamy soap out of my fingers and set to work scrubbing her former coven-mate’s remains from her skin and underneath her nails.
I sat down on the rim of the tub above her and worked my hair out of its messy, loose plait. “I’d mentioned to Sonia once that some of my relations are dhampir. They live about three hundred miles down the coast, which didn’t seem to interest her. She did perk up when I revealed my cousin had been a blood alchemist. Perhaps she thought I’d take to the craft, or have an easier time using family connections…but after the way it ended for him…”
“Felix was your cousin?”
I nodded. “His death was the reason most of my relatives left Dreadmist. The gossip was relentless. ”
“Josephine studied with him for a while under the same elder alchemist. It took her several months until she returned to the craft. His loss shook her badly.”
“We were closer as children.” I spun my fingers through the cloudy water, scooping up lavender and petals only to pour them back. “Even though we’d grown apart, I was proud of him. Among the first of the dhampir to study blood alchemy—it was everything he’d wanted, to prove himself. I feel sorry for him…for what happened. No one deserves such a cruel fate.”
I listened to the water trickling, the rhythm of the coarse brush on Morrigan’s skin, the softly guttering flames. It was easier to focus on the gentle warmth, less overwhelming to my fledgling senses. Morrigan’s heart was a steady anchor again. Whatever had been shattered inside her was beginning to mend.
The question that had weighed heavily on my mind came to the fore. I hoped she wouldn’t run away from it now.
“What would you have done with me if I’d been dhampir?”
“Nothing.”
“But it was the first thing you’d asked when Gwen told you of my condition. And now, with one of them killed…” She remained preoccupied, yet I pressed onward, determined to have my answer.
“One of the households I’ve worked for now and again—between the coven house—had children who were friends with dhampir. Little ones, not more than five or six years old. You hear an awful lot when others believe you’re not especially important. There is something happening to them, Morrigan. It’s been this way for months now, whispers and rumors and secrets…”
“I hardly know what’s going on myself, though I’ve been trying to make sense of it. Whatever good that’s done. People come to me for help, for guidance I don’t know how to give. They either fear me and our coven or believe me to be some semblance of authority in vampiric matters, like the High Council.”
“You’ve had an injured dhampir on your doorstep before.”
“Yes,” Morrigan replied, her voice strained. “There was nothing I could do for her, the poor child was already lost. She thrashed like a caged beast one moment, and the next she was gone, a pile of ash in my arms.”
Startled, my eyes widened.
Her tone was somber. “At the time, I didn’t think to connect the two—her ashes and her coven’s curse. It felt like something hopelessly dark.”
“Had she touched the sunlight?”
Morrigan let the scrub brush drop onto the floor. “Yes, but it seemed much more insidious. Alchemy gone awry, I’d thought. It happened so quickly, after she’d come into the shade. A delay of some sort. Perhaps the curse afflicts them differently if they’ve been fed cursed blood. I saw her veins that day…they writhed with something dark. Something I didn’t have a name for yet.”
I settled my palm on her cheek, swiping away her tear. “No fault of yours.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” she confessed. “There was a couple who came to me just weeks before you arrived. Parents of a dhampir boy who was perhaps nineteen—he’d disappeared, they said. Then one night, he returned to their house, behaving strangely, aggressively. He’d tried to kill them before they had no choice but to flee. Wild as an animal gone rabid.”
“Did they ever learn of his fate?”
Morrigan shook her head. “After seeing the girl, I hadn’t the heart to tell them he likely suffered the same.”
We lapsed into silence. I combed shaking fingers through my hair, watching the water bead down Morrigan’s knee.
“It hadn’t occurred to me that Sonia might be involved until I learned she’d come back,” she continued. “I don’t know how that slipped past the High Council—an entire coven residing in the ruins. And then Effie killed that dhampir woman… I’ve been turning it over in my mind. I think she might’ve done it to spite Sonia. One less dhampir to claim.” Morrigan pushed her wet hair off her forehead in a tangled wave of silver-grey. “Had you heard anything while doing your chores there? Seen anything?”
“I…” I opened my mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again. “Well, there were always bloodstains to lift from bed sheets and carpets and the like. But I could never prove that their coven was draining anyone outright. And, if I’m honest, their hostility kept me from nosing around. I didn’t want to lose my job.”
Morrigan’s exhale was sharp. “I don’t know what’s to be done about them now.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “We?”
“Yes, we ,” I insisted.
Her laughter filled the room. “Not until we get your strength up.” Morrigan stole a glance at the clock in the corner. “An hour and a half until midnight and I become useless to you.”
I drew her closer to me, leaning over the filmy water, bubbles rippling against the sides.
“And since I’ve already gotten you wet…”
Our mouths were but a breath from each other as I braced on the tub’s rim to keep steady. Morrigan fisted her hand into my chemise and pulled me forward over the side of the bathtub. I yelped but didn’t protest, splashing into the warm water on top of her, my chemise completely soaked in an instant. Water weighed down the light, gauzy fabric. More of it sloshed onto the stone floor, glistening with soapy foam, bubbles catching miniature rainbows in the burning gold light.
Her enormous bathtub held us both at once—easily, as it turned out.
“I don’t even have the energy to yell at you for that,” I said, rubbing soap from my eyes with the heel of my palm.
Morrigan picked lavender sprigs and petals out of my hair and flicked them onto the wet floor. She reclined back into the tub, looking extraordinarily pleased with herself, wearing a roguish grin and nothing else. As she relaxed, her knees breached the waterline, rivulets sluicing down her flushed skin. She reached for me, a handful of my chemise seized in her fist again. It didn’t take much effort to guide me between her bent knees, her body warmer than the bathwater.
“First thing’s first.” Morrigan tugged the chemise past my hips and dragged it upward, her impatient fingers skirting my ribs and the sides of my breasts. The soaked fabric hit the tiles with a hard, watery slap. Morrigan’s pomegranate gaze lingered on the rise of my chest above the water’s soapy line. There were herbs and petals stuck to my skin—and hers—but she stared at me like she wanted to devour me.
Perhaps that was what she saw in my eyes whenever I starved for her blood.
“Come here,” she beckoned. “You’re not nearly close enough.”
Her hands gripped my backside and a glittering pleasure whispered across my skin when she settled me between her spread legs. The water glimmered and rippled, a light splash following Morrigan’s haste. Notching my leg over her hip, her nails sunk into my ass while she caught my earlobe in her fangs. Her veins thrummed, hot with need, with a fresh influx of blood. She nipped and soothed with a cleansing brush of her tongue, kissing below my ear to my neck.
“ You’re certainly hungry,” I teased. “Did you not just say that we had to build my strength?”
“We are.” She licked a path down the side of my neck, following the artery there, and a shudder went straight through me. “This counts.”
My thumbs circled her nipples, already hardened from the air that hit her after she’d risen out of the water. Morrigan groaned at my touch, one hand gripping my bare thigh. She sucked at my neck—wanting to bite me, I was sure—and a desperate whine escaped us both. I rocked into her embrace, the valleys of muscle across her lean stomach brushing between my thighs. Morrigan’s hands pressed me closer, her nails digging into my skin. Each breath she took heaved with expectant desire, droplets of water rolling from her collarbones to her breasts, beaded with foam.
The bathwater was silk around me. Morrigan stirred up a current below the surface with her clever fingers, made it swirl and lap sensually through my parted thighs, teasing me with a ghostly kiss. Before my moan could echo across the room, she captured it, swallowing it with her urgent, blood-drunk mouth, a kiss that was more fang than tongue. Desire threading through me, Morrigan’s heart quickened under my hands. She swore when my mouth returned to her breast, the tip of my tongue rolling over her nipple, sucking with a pinch of my fang’s bladed point.
“Ella, darling,” she panted, her lips still poised against my neck while she spoke, “you’re still not close enough for my liking. I want to feel you.”
Her fingers moved from my inner thigh to that delicate, aching pulse. The barest trace of her fingertips, and the muscles trembled, pleasure singing white-hot into my belly. Even submerged like this, I was dripping for her.
Morrigan shifted under me to brace her leg against the tub, her toes curling at the rim. Grasping my hip, she angled my body between her thighs, drawing my bent knee up toward her chest. My pelvis tilted to meet Morrigan’s, and I arched back a little, the ends of my hair dipping below the surface, one hand balanced on the tub’s rim.
That first brush of delirious friction made us gasp together. I rolled my hips, pressing into her clit as we sank into a furious rhythm. Pink-tinged water splashed and roiled around us, raining onto the floor tiles. Morrigan thrust upwards to match the pace I’d set, spreading myself with my fingers to steal all I could of that dizzying, breathless contact. She felt wonderful writhing into me, her clit sending sparks of pleasure through mine with each stroke, the water lapping over us heightening the friction.
Morrigan’s breath came in gasping pants, a moan spilling out of me when I circled my hips again, hitting that perfect spot of pressure. Arching back a little more, I gripped the tub’s edge as Morrigan chased after the angle that made her thighs tremble, rubbing herself against me with deeper, harder strokes. Her toes—polished in black, like her nails—hooked on the tub’s edge, she had stretched her arms across to brace herself, her head tipped back, steamy moisture glimmering on her skin, fangs bared in pleasure. A keening breath tumbled out of me as I watched her, the candlelight carving shadows into the planes of her face.
“Almost,” I gasped. Morrigan’s blood was a sultry drumbeat in my chest, my body pulling taut at my core, her molten desire and mine easing our rhythm.
“That won’t do,” she growled.
Working one of her hands between us, she trailed two lithe fingers over the seam of me, feeling my body respond, pulsing and slick. I cried out before she even got the chance to slip in, ready for her, a curse withering away on my lips. I’d wanted to feel those long, deft fingers inside me ever since Morrigan had teased my clit with her ring that first time her hand delved between my thighs.
My arousal slippery on her skin, she pushed into me easily. Moaning out her name, I listened to its echo, a litany sung to the stained glass and weak moonlight. She was all I could think, all I could feel, wrapped around those two fingers. Her thrusts took up the same reckless pace as she buried herself to the knuckle in my drenching heat. My hands splayed across the lean, rigid muscles of her abdomen, felt her body tensing like mine.
“Take from me.” The rasping order bolted a shock of searing desire through me, my clit throbbing from its sudden demand. I clenched hard around her stroking fingers. “Put your fangs to my throat, Elspeth. Drink me down.”
Stars above, she didn’t need to ask me twice.
Leaning over her—the new angle bringing my cries to a sobbing crescendo—I brought my mouth to her neck, suckling openly at the tender skin, breathing in the scent of what coursed swiftly beneath. I inhaled her, mingled with the cloying wetness between our legs. My fangs broke her flesh, lapping fresh blood onto my tongue, and Morrigan’s body jerked hard against me. A spray of cooling bathwater pelted our faces. It was my name on her lips, her pleasure erupting with a wild moan. She pulled her fingers from me and I shivered as I felt the aftershocks of her orgasm, her muscles spasming against my clit while she rutted into me.
Feeling her like that, vulnerable and undone by my bite, sent me careening over the edge after her, the glowing knot in my belly imploding outward. Sensation hit me all at once—Morrigan’s hot, pliant body, her salty blood running down my throat, our hearts roaring as one, silky water eddying over our flushed skin with a perfume of fragrant herbs and lavender.
When I settled astride her lap again, curling into her embrace, my fingers looped around the chain of her pendant as I sucked the last dregs from the healing bite. Morrigan’s fingers nestled against my clit once more to quiet my body’s intense writhing. With a few measured strokes, she anchored us back to the present—both of us weightless and drifting in a haze that was more than diffused candlelight and steam.
I could have fallen asleep in her embrace, her heart a lullaby beneath my ear.
Never had I known a craving like the one I had for her, blood and body and immortal soul.
“We’ve made a mess, haven’t we?”
My bare toes rippled the inch or so of water that had collected on the stone tiles. Some of the candles had been doused from our careless splashing, but I still noticed the pink of blood in the cooling bathwater.
“I believe this mess is your fault,” I accused, wringing the water out of my hair, the strands dark and plastered to my shoulders.
Morrigan peeled my chemise off the floor and draped it over the side of the tub with a wet thwack . I watched the light—golden, dancing, glittering—play across her moonlit skin, the sharply defined muscles of her back, the contours of her stomach, the sensuous, swaying curve of her hips, her backside. After retrieving a couple of fresh towels, she wrapped one around herself and tossed the other to me.
Stray beads of water still sparkling on her shoulders, Morrigan held her open palms over the floor, lost in focus. The air grew suffocating and humid, awash with the iron scent of vampiric sorcery. Through strands of dripping hair, I studied her hands, her unflinching concentration, the towel stilled between my own. Candle flames wavered around us, throwing wayward shadows. Morrigan’s eyes fluttered closed—she made it look so simple, so effortless. But I felt it, the subtle pulse of blood in the water.
Steam rose up from the floor as the water evaporated under Morrigan’s touch, thick clouds fogging the washroom carrying a hint of iron. Watery metal, like coins tossed into the bottom of a fountain, like that night when my blood had colored the wet paving stones.
I shuddered despite the sweltering heat and finished drying my hair. The plush towel wrapped around my body was a comforting embrace, warding off the chill that pressed behind the evaporating heat. Morrigan sagged against the edge of the tub, the stones beneath our feet only damp from the dissipated steam.
When I glanced up, her face was stricken, guarded, lips pressed so tightly they’d blanched. “Everything all right?”
“Fine.” She managed a smile that was neither reassuring nor had made it entirely past a grimace. I chose not to pursue the matter, for her sake. Morrigan pushed off the tub, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the tiles. Tension remained in her body, some sort of hurt I couldn’t see. She wouldn’t let me. “Let’s get you back into bed. You need your rest.”
Even though I wondered if perhaps the rest was for Morrigan’s benefit, I didn’t object to crawling back into her bed. She stoked the fire into crackling bursts of embers, and we left our towels abandoned on the carpet to lounge in each other’s company. Skin against skin, the warm blankets and linens piled on top of us. Sea mist and rain drummed against the windows, the noise of angry ocean waves disrupting the quiet.
The warmth of the bathwater buzzed across my skin. Morrigan’s still smelled of lavender and soap. Both had made me drowsy as ever, but I fought sleep, my mind unable to rest with all that had happened over the last few days.
How quickly, how dramatically my life had changed. How comfortable I was now in the arms of the woman—vampire, blood sorcerer —responsible for reshaping it. For giving me a chance even though I felt as if I’d crashed into her home, her coven, and shifted something irreparable.
And what was worse, I’d taken something that was never meant to be mine. That coil of power. I didn’t understand all of it yet, but I wanted to understand her , wanted to become worthy of the blood magic she’d let me inherit.
Even if it frightened me .
I sighed, nuzzling into her shoulder.
“How long have you worked as a charwoman?” Morrigan asked while she turned onto her side, notching one of her legs between mine.
“Four years,” I answered, my eyes closing. The firelight played red across my eyelids. “I was utterly terrible at first. Fired by one household after the next. Clumsy, distracted, not diligent enough for their liking. One woman complained I left behind dust, another tried to claim that I’d stolen her jewelry. I’m not sure whether I’ve improved since.”
I laughed, and so did she, a pleasant vibration that echoed in our chests.
“You will never have to pick up a dirty mop or scrub a floor while you’re in this house.”
“I’ll have to earn my keep in some way,” I protested, blinking as I opened my eyes again. “You’ve done—”
“No,” Morrigan silenced me with a kiss. “No more of that. If you want to keep some of your cleaning commitments at other households, I won’t stop you. But I told you before that you’ll be well cared for. I want to take care of you.” She laced her fingers between mine, kissed me again. “You weren’t the only one transformed that night.”
“Oh?” A question, whispered against her lips. I searched the red of her eyes as I glanced up at her, trying to understand.
“All the fear and sorrow and hurt in your blood—I tasted that, too. Consumed it all, felt it…tried to dampen what I could.” When my look became a silent question, Morrigan only smiled, an unspoken reassurance. “Your heart was so panicked, so weak by the time you’d found us. And then I tasted you, Ella, and I knew that I’d do everything in my power to make sure you never felt like that again.”
Tears gathered in my eyes, and I blinked at them, though one slid down my cheek. Morrigan caught it on her thumb. “No one’s cared for me like this… it’s been years since… I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”
She pressed her soft lips to my forehead and I relaxed into the scent of her lavender-kissed skin. Her heart was beating a languid rhythm against my ear. “You’ll never be made to feel insignificant or neglected or forgotten,” Morrigan promised. “Not while you have me. Not as long as you’re mine.”
Doubt curdled in the pit of my stomach despite her sleepy promise. Whenever that bloodlust subsided, whenever we both could think clearly again, I was certain she’d grow bored of me, regretful of the rash decisions we’d made. Regretful that she’d tethered herself to a stranger with such haste.
But I couldn’t bear to think of that now.
“Tell me about your mortal years.” I forced my drowsiness aside, grasping every moment I could with her before the clocks struck midnight.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she said with a laugh.
“Anywhere,” I replied. “Anything at all. What were you like when you were human?”
“A fool and a menace.”
“Truly?”
I felt Morrigan’s exhale under my cheek. “You would’ve hated me, though to some people I’m still a menace.” Her fingers traced absently across my back, feather-light patterns down my shoulder blades, her fingertips walking along my spine. “I was impulsive, reckless…hideously arrogant, with no parents to tame me. A scrawny creature not unlike a feral cat. I had no purpose other than to make trouble everywhere I went, picking fights I had no business starting. Then one day I got tired of it all—tired of myself, but there was no outrunning that—and stowed away on a ship in the harbor. I must’ve been at least seventeen, eighteen. They had no choice but to take me on as a deckhand because I was so stubborn.”
“How adventurous,” I said. “A life at sea. That I can picture easily. It suits you…ocean wind in your hair, tunic billowing, some kind of cutlass or saber in your hand—”
“Ella, I swabbed bird shit from the decks,” Morrigan said, pulling at the bed covers that had shifted down. “I wasn’t a pirate.”
“Are you absolutely sure you’re not lying to me?”
“Yes, but I won’t rob you of that fantasy. That would be callous.” She drew strands of my hair between her fingers, the dark gold glimmering in the fire’s wavering light. “We did have a brush with pirates out there every now and again, and I fell in love—or what I thought at the time was love—with a ship’s captain while we were in port across the sea. I nearly joined her crew… until I woke up to an empty bed, a parting note. I still wonder what became of her.”
I twined my fingers between hers. “Once you make room in your heart for someone, they often stay there. No matter how much time has passed.”
“When I returned to the harbor, I was in my twenties. Much had changed… I had changed. I found work in a blood brothel until I chose to become vampire and joined the coven. This is an abbreviated course of events, mind you. You’ll have to extract the finer details from me when I’m not about to sprout bat wings.”
My eyelids were too heavy to keep open, the sigh that breezed out of me becoming a yawn. “I’ll hold you to it.”